KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Stephanie Grassie wandered into Sit On It one morning and began browsing.

Grassie learned about the Kansas City, Mo., shop online after searching Yelp for furniture
stores and finding a customer description that read, “It’s like art you can sit on.”

Shop owner Richelle Plett told Grassie that if she wanted to see what the studio was really
about, she should head upstairs to the roadkill floor.

That’s where Plett stores hundreds of old sofas, chairs, ottomans and other upholstered
furnishings that she has bought from yard, garage and estate sales — or, as the name implies, found
abandoned and decrepit on the side of the road.

She rescues them and gives them some much-needed love.

Each piece has a price tag that indicates how much that love will cost the person who chooses
it. Most sofas run around $800 in labor charges, while occasional chairs are about $450.

The price includes creating medium-density cushions, installing Dacron and cotton batting,
stabilizing the frame, hand-tying springs and touching up exposed wood, Plett said. Fabric, which
is often more than the cost of labor, is extra.

“I can’t find anything in stores that I like. This is unique, one-of-a-kind,” said Grassie, who
is drawn to antique sofas and fabrics from India, as she looked around the first-floor gallery.

Grassie 30, of Weatherby Lake, Mo., represents a growing niche in the world of upholstery: young
clients interested in buying and reworking vintage furniture.

According to Plett, a lot of 40-somethings seem to prefer what she calls disposable furniture
from big-box retailers.

“People who grew up during the Reagan era, they’re like, ‘Oh, let’s just get something new,’ ”
she said. “But people 30 and under seem to realize that you can’t get the good stuff in those
stores, and they feel a need to connect with previous generations. They walk in here, and it’s like
walking into their grandparents’ homes. It’s nostalgic.

“They also can take it and personalize it, which is something you can’t get at Pottery Barn,
where they offer various shades of beige,” she said.

Grassie added that there’s also “the whole sustainability factor; the idea that it’s not going
to a landfill.”

Typically, a high-quality sofa or chair will have springs that have been hand-tied eight ways,
tight webbing and down cushioning. In low-quality furniture, cheap foam and thin wood substitute
for those parts.

Laura Rowzee, who co-owns Rowzee Upholstery in Kansas City, Mo., with her husband, Andy, is
astounded by the low quality of new furniture.

“It is so, so bad,” she said. “The frames are only one-eighth of an inch thick in places. It’s
hard to take the staples out because the frame wants to break. And the foam they use is thin and
often chopped up. (Customers) bring it in, and we tell them it’s not worth reupholstering.”

Plett keeps a new chair on hand at Sit On It, with pieces of fabric removed to expose the
cardboard that shapes one of its arms and the lack of webbing on the back.

“That’s a no-no,” she said, pointing to the webbing. “Unless you were absolutely sentimental
about this piece, it would be questionable as to whether it should be reupholstered.”

Plett, whose grandmother was a tailor and mother a seamstress, had been dabbling in interior
design for several years when she founded Sit On It in 2011. One of her upholsterers, Pat Tague,
has been upholstering furniture since 1969.

Plett had so many clients who wanted to learn to upholster that she and Tague began offering
beginner classes last year.

For $375 plus the cost of fabric, they teach how to measure, mark and cut upholstery; properly
use the tools; attach new webbing; add and hand-tie springs using the eight-way method; cut and
apply foam; and fold corners of fabric.

The students upholster ottomans during four weekly classes of two hours each.

It’s a challenge and an eye-opener for a lot of them, Plett said. If they do well, they might be
able to upholster a small club chair, although probably not a long 1960s Empire-style sofa such as
one sitting on the gallery’s first floor.

A customer had commissioned it in dark menswear suit fabric with deep-button diamond tufting on
the backrest. The total cost for labor and fabric was just over $2,000.

“We refinished the wood trim but retained the dents, because it tells the story of the piece,”
Plett said. “You couldn’t buy that sofa with that fabric and that quality for less than
$5,000."

Plett sometimes talks about her roadkill as if they’re alive.

“Every single one of these pieces has a story,” she said. “They all have an energy about them.
They’re like lost puppies happy to be found.”